Chapter 33

Continuation — The law of subjective analogy

1651. We form ideas of entia, whether specific or generic, according to the limited mode in which we communicate with them through feeling. Our action is limited by certain laws, which are partly cosmological, arising from the term of our feeling, and partly psychological, arising from the soul which follows its nature in responding to the terms presented to it. The terms of feeling do not of course present entia to our sense but signs which represent them to our rational principle. These signs are actions and effects whose disposition and characteristics come from the nature of the recipient, the soul, and are the real efficient cause; the agents different from the soul are merely excitatory causes.

Hence only our intellect, not our natural feeling, is in direct communication with entia in themselves. Because our understanding, whose only proper object is an ens, cannot know entia except by their representative signs, it is dependent solely on signs for the extent of its knowledge. Our mind, therefore, is limited in its knowledge because of the limited matter presented to it, on which it must exercise its rational operations. This limitation however does not prevent it from acquiring many, absolutely true cognitions about entia,(346) a fact which gives the lie to the philosophy which asserts (I say 'asserts' because it gives no proof at all of its opinions) that 'the order of human knowledge corresponds exactly to the order of entia'. Such a claim transforms the human being into God, a paradox contradicted by all the most serious philosophical schools. I shall waste no time refuting it; instead, I will explain the law of subjective analogy.

1652. This law is another limitation added to the act of human knowledge. If the knowledge of things of which we have sensible perception contains so much that is limited and subjective, the understanding will be even more restricted when it tries to argue and reason about things supplied neither by feeling nor perception.
Analogy concerns precisely those entia with which our feeling has no direct communication and from which we receive no action, modification or effect. What can we know about such entia?

1653. I divided all human cognitions into two great classes, intuition and predication.

Pure intuition enables us to know only universal being.
Predication normally begins from the sensible perception of a subsistent ens. Once we possess this perception, we know its form in its species (universal being limited by the sensible effect connected with it), and its subsistence in affirmation. We then analyse the form or matter, and come to know their abstracts and parts. Next we synthesise, and finally, by comparing many beings, we determine different kinds of relationships.

1654. But without perception, we lack the basis for the whole process. What can replace this basis?

1. Words or other signs which have no representative virtue of the ens in question.

2. Ontological relationships between perceived entia and the unperceived ens about which we seek information.

Entia which do not fall under human perception are of two kinds: 1. Those whose non-perception is accidental. An example is of people born blind or kept from light or colour throughout their life. 2. Those which are totally unperceived because alien to or distant from our sensories or natural feeling. Pure spirits are examples of this.

Objects of the first kind have ontological relationships only by means of words. They are contingent beings incapable of being revealed by the intuition of necessary, universal being. The only means of knowing them is by non-representative signs. An example are the words used by someone talking to a blind person about colours. The words do not represent colours for him in any way whatsoever. Their total affect is to make the blind person understand what colours have in common with sounds and other feelings, or with some sensible entia perceived by the blind person. This common element is so small that it constitutes only an analogy, not a likeness.

1655. What then is analogy? Which area of knowledge does it concern? — Analogy is founded in proportion, not in feeling. In fact, there are often equal proportions between specifically different entia: largeness, smallness, simple composition, multiple composition, greater and lesser multiplicity or numbers, etc. constitute properties relative to entia not as perceived and felt, but as entia or a given kind of entia, for example, contingent beings. These characteristics, or generic and ontological properties, do not establish a likeness between entia, but only what we call analogy.

1656. Non-representative signs of such entia give therefore some analogical knowledge, by which we simultaneously acquire knowledge of their subsistence, but not of their positive form. In place of this form, we acquire some determinations which are sufficient to prevent our confusing this ens with other entia. These determinations can be called a vicarious, analogical form of the positive form.

1657. The same must be said about angels, who are also contingent beings. However, because they are complete entia, not accidents like colours, we can receive their effects but not their direct, representative effects, that is, effects felt in our feeling by the direct action of an ens, action which represents the ens for us. The effects of the angels upon us are indirect and external; from them we argue to the angels' subsistence and to some of their endowments and potencies. Even here, we generally refer the effects to potencies similar to those of which we have positive knowledge, except that we can conceive the angelic potencies with greater efficacy if the effects do not differ in species but only in magnitude from those we observe in nature. Nevertheless we could not be certain of the accuracy of this likeness because we know that sometimes there are causes, called equivocal by the ancients, which maintain only a virtual, eminent likeness with their effect. In this case the concept of such a cause or potency could be only analogous to the causes or potencies we know positively.

1658. However, the cognition of infinite, absolute being, that is, of God, comes to us from three sources:

1. From revelation which, if we prescind from the internal light of grace, gives us only an analogous cognition, communicated by words, that is, by non-representative signs.

2. From effects, that is, from creation, etc. These also give us an analogous cognition because we do not see how creation operates. Only ontological reasoning tells us that the cause is equivocal relative to its effect, and supereminent.

3. From ontological reasoning. This again gives us an analogical cognition of God. However, it shows us 1. that such a cognition is purely analogical and consequently totally insufficient to give us positive knowledge of the supreme Being, and 2. that we cannot have positive knowledge of God in either of the two ways in which we have positive knowledge of the entia we know. In other words, we cannot know 1. his essence by means of the species, nor 2. his subsistence by means of feeling and affirmation. There must however be a third way of vision or intellective apprehension, which has no example in nature but is such that we perceive the subsistence in the idea itself.

1659. We must therefore distinguish two actions of our mind relative to the supreme Being: that by which we form some analogical cognition and that by which we know that such a cognition is inadequate and imperfect, although it is the highest and truest knowledge we can naturally have of God. Let me explain this analogical cognition better.

1660. First, we must establish that God in not intuited naturally by human beings. To say otherwise is 1. to fall into an error contrary to revelation, which tells us that God is he 'whom no man sees or can see';(347) 2. to oppose theological science which teaches that we do not know what God is but simply that he is, and that we do not know even this without some demonstration;(348) and 3. to oppose both common sense and philosophy. In order to explain human cognitions, philosophy requires human beings to know 'what being is', and thus have the intuition of 'being', but nothing more, not the intuition of the first being. St. Thomas, the greatest Italian philosopher and theologian, writes, 'that TRUTH IN GENERAL is known to us per se, but it is not known to us per se that THERE IS A FIRST TRUTH.'(349) He acknowledges that there would be no intellective power or potency unless it contained within itself some likeness of God,(350) which is not God but being in general. We can fittingly say that being in general is like God, not in the way that two real entia are alike, but in the way that a real ens and the ideal essence which makes it known are alike. The realisation of an essence can be said to be like the essence, although we should more accurately say that an ideal essence is the likeness of the realised ens which, therefore, is known through and in the ideal essence.(351)

1661. Having excluded the error that the natural object of intuition is God, we must see what kind of cognition we can naturally obtain of this being superior to nature.
Being in general, as intuited by the soul, makes us know nothing real; with it alone we would not even know that any reality existed. Moreover, because it is a most simple, uniform light, nothing can be distinguished in it, not even elementary ideas. In fact all ideas, except that of being, can always be reduced to relationships between real things and ideal being, to relationships of relationships, and to abstracts of these relationships, obtained by means of different views of the spirit. Consequently we do not naturally possess the first principles of reasoning, which are applied ideas, but form them through relating real beings to being in general.

Supreme ideas and the supreme principles themselves therefore retain something of the same limitation as the real entia from which they were originally obtained through the action of our spirit. Real entia are those we perceive with our feeling and are, above all, corporeal entia. Only being in general is without any limitation whatever; it alone endows us with the faculty of knowing the limitation of our own ideas and of not falling into the error of believing that our limited, relative knowledge is unlimited and absolute. This guarantees for us the possession of truth

1662. I will take a few examples of the most general ideas which then become the guiding principles of reasoning.

1. Essence and subsistence. — Because all the things we perceive are contingent, they do not have their subsistence in their essence; they can be thought, but may still not subsist. Every time we think of essence and say the word, we do so without including subsistence; we posit essence without subsistence. This is the only concept we have of the essence of anything, the only language in which to express it.

When, for example, we think of God, who does not come under our perception, we apply to him our limited concepts of essence and of subsistence, and reason about him by analogy with these known entities. Having no word to express the identity of essence and subsistence (the only word suitable for expressing the supreme Ens), we are forced to apply separately to him two imperfect phrases divine essence and divine subsistence, as if they were two things; nor can we attribute to the divine essence what applies to the divine subsistence, and vice versa, without error, although these are one single thing in God. Hence theologians wisely observe that we can indeed truthfully say: 'God, (subsistence, subsistent person) generates God (another subsistent person)', but not: 'Godhead (essence) generates Godhead (another essence)'.

This second statement would mean positing many gods, whereas the first posits only many persons because the noun God, understood as subsistence, receives the value of person. It is true that ontological reasoning (carried out later by comparing with ens in general the reasoning we produce with the aid of derived ideas) corrects our limited thinking and reveals the imperfection of our language. But we have no substitute. It protects us, therefore, from error but does not supply us with other ideas and other words suitable for accurate reasoning about the divinity. We are in fact always obliged to take the following tortuous course and: 1. reason about God with imperfect and analogical ideas taken from contingent natures, the only ideas we have; and 2. then acknowledge that our language is imperfect, limited, inadequate and incapable of being changed into a perfect, unlimited language on a par with such a wonderful subject.(352)

1663. 2. Generic essence, abstract specific essence and full specific essence (individuated, formed). — Although these distinctions are not found in God, the ideas with which we reason (and we have no others) always pertain to one or other of these three modes. Even the words with which we reason indicate the same three modes of ideas. Thus in reasoning about God, we can use only these words and ideas, which are totally inadequate and discordant with divine being.

Wisdom, goodness, power, etc. are generic ideas expressing the abstract perfections of entia: 'Godhead' is an abstract, specific idea. 'God', as a common name, is a full, individuated, specific essence; as a proper name, it is subsistent person. We use these ideas to reason about the supreme being and apply to him words which express the ideas. Strictly speaking, however, there is in God neither generic essence nor abstract or full, specific essence; God is a subsistent, extremely simple being without division of any kind. It is we who unfailingly suppose division by applying to him ideas drawn from contingent entia where we find the real distinctions made known by distinct, separate ideas. They are the only ideas and means of knowledge we have in this life and we are compelled to use them to know God, whom we do truly come to know in some way. We are helped by ontological reasoning, which tells us 1. that each separate perfection outside God is, in God, God himself;(353) 2. the Godhead we conceive as an abstract form is the subsistent God himself;(354) and finally 3. 'God', normally understood as a common noun and applied to many beings (although incorrectly), does not express a species but simply a real subsistent being. However our reasoning, which tells us that this must be the case relative to the supreme being, does not explain how this is so, that is, it reveals neither subsistent perfection nor subsistent abstract species nor subsistent full species. It tells us what God is not (there is no division in genus, species and subsistence), but does not tell us what 'that subsistence is which includes in its simplicity all that is in the species and genus'. It neither shows nor makes us perceive or think a subsistence of this kind, just as the definition of colour does not make a blind person think of colour. It reveals the terms but not their connection, in which the divine being consists.

1664. These are common principles accepted by theologians and by the most famous philosophers. Being immutable, these principles show that a system which teaches the following is as contrary to philosophical argument as it is to Catholic faith:

1. The order of our conceptions is perfectly equal to the order of things. This is not true of divine things nor of anything of which we have no perception.

2. God is the object of the natural intuition of the human mind. If this were so, the human mind could have conceptions adequate to supreme being.

These two principles are in themselves very serious errors, and very serious in their consequences, one of which is pantheism.

1665. I conclude:

1. A subjective law of our rational principle obliges us to reason about God, and things which do not fall under our perception, by analogy with the things we do perceive.

2. This reasoning results in a negative, limited knowledge which is nevertheless true, not false.

3. To obtain this knowledge, which is the only kind we can have of these things, we must accept our ideas, our means of knowledge, as they are, without confusing or arbitrarily changing them. Similarly we must use current words for what they mean, in conformity with the important teaching of scholasticism that 'the truth of statements depends not only on what is meant but also on how it is meant.'(355)

4. Finally, ontological reasoning informs us of the limitation and imperfection of our knowledge and thus protects us from error. No error is committed by anyone with limited, imperfect knowledge if he knows that his knowledge is such and does not accept it as positive and perfect. Only reasoning of this kind is perfectly in conformity with absolute truth, so that the order of entia corresponds to what such reasoning posits in our mind. This reasoning, although it seems of little consequence, is, I repeat, sufficient to avoid error because we can use our other imperfect cognitions to advantage without falling into any error.

Notes

(346) Rinnovamento , bk. 3, c. 47 [bk. 4, c. 5].

(347) 1 Tim 6: 16; Jn 1: 18; 1 Jn 4: 12.

(348) 'The proposition, "God is, in so far as he is in himself", is known per se because the predicate is the same as the subject; God is his own being. — But because we do not know what God is, the proposition is not known per se [but must be shown through things better known] relative to ourselves and less known relative to their nature, that is, through effects' (St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 2, art 1; Theod ., 55-60, 75-78).

(349) St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 2, art. 1, ad 3.

(350) ''Because the intellective virtue of the creature is not the essence of God, it must be some shared likeness of him who is the first intellect. Hence the intellectual virtue of the creature is called an intelligible light, derived as it were from the first light' (St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 12, art. 2). Here we must distinguish between the objective light of the intellect and its subjective potency which is enlightened by that light.

(351) NE, vol. 3, 1180-1189.

(352) 'Although in reality God is the same as the Godhead, THE MODE OF MEANING is not the same for both. Because the name "God" means DIVINE ESSENCE IN ITS POSSESSOR, it can, according to this mode of its meaning, be naturally taken as person. — Hence things proper to persons can be predicated of this name "God"; we can say, for example, that God is generated or generates. — But the word, "ESSENCE" cannot, according to the mode of its meaning, be taken as person, because it means ESSENCE AS ABSTRACT FORM. — Consequently things proper to persons which distinguish them from each other cannot be attributed to essence. This would mean a distinction in the divine essence, just as there is a distinction in the supposita ' (St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 39, art. 5).

(353) St. Thomas, following the traces of ecclesiastical tradition, wisely says: 'We must first consider that our understanding of anything is indicated by its name, just as our understanding of a stone is indicated by its name. Names are signs of intellectual conceptions so that our understanding of every single thing, indicated by a name, is the intellectual conception indicated by the name. — However our intellect, which cannot comprehend God nor IN OUR PRESENT STATE SEE HIM IN HIS ESSENCE, knows him from created things; the different perfections of the conduct of creatures, such as wisdom, will and so forth, imperfectly represent divine perfection. — In the same way our intellect, RECEIVING ITS KNOWLEDGE FROM CREATED THINGS, BECOMES LIKE THE ONE DIVINE ESSENCE BY MEANS OF DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS, ALTHOUGH IMPERFECTLY. Thus goodness, wisdom, power and anything else we predicate of God DIFFER IN OUR UNDERSTANDING BECAUSE WE CONCEIVE THEM DIFFERENTLY. Nevertheless they are the same thing in reality because the divine essence, which our intellect represents BY DIFFERENT CONCEPTS just as different things represent divine essence in different forms, is one and the same thing. This is indeed the proper way of understanding what we were first considering. Because every perfection is most truly in God, and a true understanding of wisdom differs from that of goodness, our understanding of them in God must differ, although in him they are in a real, simple mode, and are consequently the same thing' (Opusc. 9, De articulis CVIII sumptis ex opere Petri de Tarantasia) . We note here that the phrase, 'our understanding of them in God', means 'according to the different conceptions of our intellect', as St. Thomas, who posits no real distinction of any kind in God himself, later explains.

(354) Again St. Thomas wisely observes: 'We cannot speak about simple things except according to the mode of composites FROM WHICH WE OBTAIN OUR KNOWLEDGE. When we speak of God therefore, we use concrete nouns to indicate his subsistence, because only composites subsist for us. We use abstract nouns to indicate his simplicity. 'Godhead' or 'life', or similar words about God, must relate to THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WAY OUR INTELLECT RECEIVES THEM, not to any difference in reality' (St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 3, art. 3, ad 1).

(355) St. Thomas, S.T. , I, q. 39, arts. 4 and 5.